Tag: nature

Holy Wild, Rite & Ritual

Worshipping Nature in the Digital Age

Alison Leigh Lilly

At the heart of my spiritual life rests the deep knowing that ritual is a way of listening to the Song of the World as it moves through the earth and the land, and engaging with that Song as something holy, wholly challenging and transformative. Shared ritual is when we accept the burden and blessing of being embodied beings of this dense, physical world that gives us life, and when allow ourselves to respond in kind, to speak back to the natural world with its energies and currents and wild mysteries. Ritual is not for our sake alone, but for the sake of the whole world. It is for the sake of the solitude and silence that surrounds us, that frightening shadow of void and absence that makes us who we are, makes us whole.

Holy Wild, Nature Photography

Azaleas After Storm

Alison Leigh Lilly

Another gray, rainy day here in Pittsburgh with a week of similarly chilly, damp weather to come, and while it may be good for our newly planted garden, such a wet, cold spring weighs heavy on the soul that longs for the warm touch of sunlight. (And of course, I worry about the Allegheny and the Monongahela joining the Ohio to swell the Mississippi River still further...) Still, the azalea bush is finally blooming in front of the house. That burst of color brings a bit of relief to the dull, gray days. What cheers you up in the midst of chill doldrums?

Featured, Holy Wild, Nature Photography

Wild Urban Spring

Alison Leigh Lilly

I'm not sure what these flowers are, but the exuberant, overflowing bush they grow on has clearly been left to run wild for years. Every spring in May these clusters of purple blossoms open, giving their scent to the unheeding speeding cars on the road. It's not a pleasant spot — the road is busy and wide and noisy, the sidewalk narrow and full of potholes and cracked slabs and litter. But every spring, these flowers create a tiny space of respite and beauty to an otherwise rough and man-dominated landscape. My best guess is that they're either wild lupine, blue wild indigo, or some kind of lilac I've never seen before. If any readers out there have a guess, please let me know. I'd love to be able to greet these beauties by name.

Contemplation & Meditation, Holy Wild

Silence in the Trees

Alison Leigh Lilly

Tonight, reading David Abram's musings on the language of our embodied selves and this thickly expressive world in which we live, I wonder about the internet. As my friend Cat has taught me, the Quakers have a saying: "This Friend speaks to my condition." The Quaker Meeting is one of silence and unfolding into Spirit. When a Friend speaks in Meeting, it is with Spirit moving through them. The breath is Spirit in the flesh, and when it stirs, the Friend opens and allows the music of Spirit (the Song of the World, as we Druids call it) to rise up and overflow.

Muse in Brief

Ambivalence of the Sacred Earth » No Unsacred Place

Alison Leigh Lilly

In my first post over at the new Pagan Newswire Collective blog project, No Unsacred Place: Earth and Nature in Pagan Traditions, I explore the Problem of Justice from an earth-centered perspective, and discuss its implications for the new Law of Mother Earth set to pass in Bolivia establishing the rights of nature: "The Problem of Justice for us is not so much why [suffering and evil] exist, but how should we respond to them? While monotheists might model themselves after an all-loving but ultimately transcendent deity who provides an example of justice and righteousness separate from and beyond the muck and mess of the world, our desire to 'attune ourselves to the earth' and model ourselves..."

Muse in Brief

Making Peace Out of Nothing At All » Pagan+Politics

Alison Leigh Lilly

In my latest article for Pagan+Politics, I explore the recent and fascinating scientific discoveries about the role that culture plays in the peacemaking and sociability of nonhuman primates: "For those of us whose religious practices are anchored in relationship with the earth and its many inhabitants, the scientific world has often seemed to lag behind in its recognition of the complexity and subtlety of nonhuman experience as we witness it on a regular basis. Studies revealing the intelligence and sensitivity of dolphins, elephants, corvine birds, honeybees and even trees and other plants, confirm what many of us have long known to be true..."

Contemplation & Meditation, Featured, Holy Wild

Etymology of My Gods

Alison Leigh Lilly

That word for god — the breath, the gleaming — the shining days like great columns bearing up the sky, buttresses, rafters. Beams that in their falling, hold. I say the names of my deities, I feel the drop of each sound into silence. They gather on the long, bent grasses in the meadow and the field, *dewos-, the many that glisten in the coming dark. Amulets of sky, jewels of the daylight, coalescing in the movement of my breath, the lingering touch of the wind. They draw themselves, wavering, into the weight and gravity of form. I open the door, and the gods enter the dark interior of my being.

Holy Wild, praxis, Rite & Ritual

Shaman & Priest: How America’s Cultural Landscape Shapes Its Religious Institutions

Alison Leigh Lilly

For several years now, I have thought of waiting tables as a hunter-gatherer kind of job. Each morning, I stalk my prey at their usual watering hole, serving up coffee and eggs with a sleek and casual smile; I am quiet, unobtrusive; I bide my time. My earnings are gifts from the gods of generosity and good luck, coming in unpredictable floods and trickles. I gather the silvery coins from the tabletops, I fold the bills into my apron pocket, and I move on again, cleaning, preparing for the breakfast rush, the lunch rush, the next herd to come and go. I'm no agriculturalist.